Sir, I have a problem. It’s bikes.

A while back I picked up crazy old frame on ebay and I’ve been tinkering with it ever since. This past weekend I put the final(ish) touches on building it up and so far I’m loving it. LOVE. ING. IT.

I say finished-ish because i don’t trust my building skills so I need to get someone who actually knows what they are doing to double check my handiwork to make sure i didn’t build a death trap before I’m super confident to ride it around in the streets. Also it’s the first bike I’ve ever ridden with drop bars and I still am not 100% sold on them so we’ll see what happens.

I actually wasn’t planning on building out another fixed gear when I started this project, I was hoping to build out a road bike but found that frame and couldn’t pass it up. Today I decided I’d take it by my friend Mr. Jalopy’s bike shop and show him how it turned out and also let him know that I hadn’t completely forsaken the road bike I’d told him I wanted to build, just pushed it back a bit. That is, until he pulled out this beauty:

And I was forced to buy it on the spot. I mean, seriously, look at this cut out on the bottom bracket, how could I say no? So now, minutes after finishing the build of the Masi I’m onto a build of a Benotto. And I’m thinking of taking one of the fixed gears up to SF since I seem to be there a lot and having something to ride would be swank. So yeah, I guess I’m obsessed or something. Fun!

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Comments (4)

The new bike looks gnarly. I’ve been researching stuff off and on for weeks now and have even test rode a few. Still not sure what I’m going to get but can’t wait to get to riding. Just looking at your photos gets me pumped even more. Maybe someday I’ll get to tour LA with you.

Hi, I’m Sean Bonner

Most of the time I live in Los Angeles, though I spend a lot of time in Tokyo too. I've run hackerspaces and blog networks, an art gallery, design firm and a record label. I'm one of the co-founders of Safecast, and currently act as Global Director. I'm a Shuttleworth Fellow, an MIT researcher and sit on the board of CicLAvia.